Pharoah Sanders live at The New Orleans Jazz Festival 2014

An old favourite, Pharoah Sanders was in action again last weekend at the 2014 New Orleans Jazz Festival. The performance on Friday 2nd May was witnessed by NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune journalist, Chris Waddington who wrote:-

As for Sanders, his evident frailties seemed to fall away whenever he picked up his horn. Still possessed of a vast, canyonlike sound, rich in overtones, he put it at the service of a dignified, spiritual music that proved funky enough to keep the crowd to its feet for much of the show. And Sanders hasn’t forgotten his expressionist youth, peppering his slowly evolving modal solos with upper register squeals and multiphonic honks that flashed like lightning amid the towering clouds.

The reviewer added further special praise for Marlon Jordan, a New Orleans trumpet player who joined Pharoah’s regular musicians for the show. With that endorsement, obviously Jordan’s is a horn to listen out for, although as the wiki link here points out, he’s been about for some time- downwithit has put on the ‘slow out of the blocks’ hat of shame for the rest of the evening!

You can read this excellent review in full here. There are also some great photos from the performance there too. As the closest I’ve been to New Orleans is through viewings of the excellent HBO series Treme, it’s great to have found this direct line to news from this great jazz city and I’ve got a new bookmark for my browser.